Greg McLaren butcherbird in an orange tree

 

 

            butcherbird in an orange tree

            Greg McLaren

 

            or its song          (a fragment of it)

            sounding almost like          hey     peekaboo

            leaves stir in the light breeze

            it lifts          as the warmth falls from the air

            the radiant heat from the rear wall

            now less
 

            the butcherbird’s nowhere

            to be seen

                             among the small

            green nodes that oranges start as

                      only its fractured call

                                                       a feral tinkling

            nothing like the two-one fret

            of koels

                          those broken currawongs

            not being seen

                                    ’s hardly different

            to being seen          the bird calls out again

            there’s a scolded answer

in magpie

                            movement          then     

in the shade          a stutter in the creased          

            un-intricate light           follows

            a tide in the leaf-edges’ dew